“Metrolink is always looking at ways to improve information about services.”
Is it? That’s good.
“A new-style Metrolink network map – designed to be more accessible, easy-to-understand and include more information – is now being rolled out to all tram stops.”
Exciting!
“As the tram network expands with more lines and services, the new map design will allow us to include more information for passengers.”
Oh, wow, we *love* information! I bet this new map is going to be better than ev-
“The name of stops is more prominent and – instead of using coloured lines – the map identifies services using a combination of letters and colours alongside arrows to show direction of travel-”
-What.
So it is that the new Metrolink map – actually, new is a misnomer; it’s been out since August, it’s just that we’ve only just noticed it – rather breaks with venerable metro map tradition.
Most such maps use a variety of bright colours to illustrate their different lines. Thus, you can see at a glance, say, that the District line heads east to Upminster, or that the A train goes from Harlem to Far Rockaway.
Until recently, Manchester’s tram network followed a similar pattern. Here’s the old map:
Click to expand.
Look at those calming pastel shades. Isn’t that lovely?
The new version, though, eschews this long established practice. And these various pastel shades have been replaced by, well, this:
Click to expand.
Grey. Grey, as far as the eye can see. Greyer than John Major’s underpants on the morning of laundry day.
Metrolink say the new map is “more accessible for the people with colourblindness”. And making transport, and the information that accompanies it, accessible to people regardless of disability is a noble aim.
But it’s not entirely clear why this meant the colour had to go altogether. Couldn’t these…
…simply have been added to the existing map, without losing the line colours?
One possible explanation for why they weren’t: the changes aren’t – or at least, aren’t exclusively – about accessibility after all. Unlike the trains on London’s tube or New York’s subway, all the trams on Manchester’s Metrolink are crowded into a small number of routes across the city centre.
The colour scheme means you end up with a bit that looks like this:
Five coloured lines along the same stretch of track. As more branches have opened, more colours have been added, making the map prettier but increasingly unwieldy.
What impact the opening of the Second City Crossing through Exchange Square will have on all this remains to be seen. It’s not yet clear whether different routes will use different bits of track, or whether most will use both. (The two crossings are only a few hundred metres from each other.) If the latter, though, you’d end up with two adjacent multicoloured strips, making the map almost unreadable.
So, the colour scheme has gone, and all that is left is grey. Pity.
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